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Friday, 26 February 2016

Throughout the nineteenth century the Royal Navy had a
strong tradition of landing “Naval Brigades” in trouble spots – invariably
succeeding brilliantly. Crises often
flared up in remote locations, to which sending Army units would be slow and
difficult. The Navy was in a position to land ad-hoc forces made up of marines
and “bluejackets” – as seamen ashore were known – and to support this ad-hoc
infantry this most ships carried light
field-guns, typically 7, 9 or 12-pounders. These were designed to be broken
down into their components – barrel, wheels etc. – for easy transport and
easily reassembled for action. Such Field-Gun Competitions are still held in
the Royal Navy, with teams competing for the Brickwood Trophy, and can be
witnessed at public displays.

Field-gun drill, circa 1895

In addition to such light weapons considerably larger ordnance
was sometimes also landed. Seamen’s
familiarity with blocks and tackles made them especially valuable when
transporting heavy equipment across obstacles and ships’ carpenters were
capable of taking on any challenge from constructing gun carriages to building
bridges. Naval muzzle-loaders which had been brought ashore played a major role
in the Siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean War (1854-56).

Naval guns in use at the Siege of Sevastopol

An even more
impressive achievement was that of the naval brigade of HMS Shannon, which dragged several of her 8-inch
weapons some 600 miles across Northern India, from Calcutta to Lucknow, during
the suppression of the Indian Mutiny in 1857-58. More powerful than any army
artillery, these weapons were invaluable for breaching walls. Given the heat, the
appalling road conditions and the fact that only bullocks and human muscle-power
was available to pull the weapons, the achievement was an epic one. Another notable example came several decades
later when 4.7” guns from HMS Powerful
and HMS Terrible were mounted on
improvised carriages and were to play a key role in the relief of Ladysmith in
1899 during the Second Boer war.

Naval forces also made use of rockets in an artillery role. Congreve
rockets, some as heavy as 32-pounds, had been in use since the Napoleonic
period and they were to be superseded from around 1850 by the Hales rocket. The
latter did not rely on a long, trailing stick for guidance but were
spin-stabilised to improved accuracy. Since no recoil forces were involved, only
a light framework was needed for launching and they could be used equally
easily ashore or in small boats. During the Abyssinian campaign of 1868 the
only body of men in the whole army which arrived at Magdala, after a brutal
march of 400 miles across the mountains, without a single man falling out for
any cause, was the Naval Brigade, including its team of rocketeers.

The Navy was in advance of the Army in the use of
semi-automatic, and later automatic, weapons.
Gatling, Nordenveldt and Gardner guns were attractive for deterrence –
and destruction of light enemy craft. This a role became especially important
when the torpedo-boat, armed with automotive “fish torpedoes” emerged as a
serious threat to large surface warships. Mounted on upper-decks, or even in
fighting tops on masts, such weapons could deliver a devastating rate and
volume of fire and could be compared with the “Goalkeeper” close-in weapons
systems mounted today for protection against missile, aircraft and fast- boat
attack.

Naval Gatlings in action in the Sudan 1884

The Gatling, Nordenveldt and
Gardner designs were all mechanical rather than automatic weapons, and were
fired by manually turning a crank, or in the case of the Nordenvedlt, by
rocking a lever back and forward. The usual round for such weapons was a heavy
.45-inch bullet but Nordenveldts were also manufactured in 1-inch calibre,
providing a fearsome hail that could rip apart a lightly constructed
torpedo-boat.

5-barrel, .45-in calibre Nordenveldt

The Archetypal Bluejacket

They were equally
devastating when used against mass attacks by tribesmen and other enemies in
colonial warfare. These designs were to be replaced in due course by
fully-automatic machine guns such as the Maxim. Though the attractions of such
weapons on board ship were obvious there was less certainty as to how such
weapons should be used on land and the British and other armies were tentative
in committing to them, seeing them mainly as a branch of the artillery arm and
being uncertain as to how they could be deployed tactically. The result was
that the majority of the early deployments were by naval brigades, the main
challenge for which was often action against lightly-armed, though often
numerous, untrained enemies on the fringes of the empire. In such cases a
combination of mechanical machine guns, on often-improvised wheeled carriages,
and standard 7 or 9-pounder naval field guns could prove hard-hitting, mobile
and flexible support to landed bluejackets and marines.

The most important single element in a naval brigade,
whether consisting of the crew of a single small ship, or drawn from many
larger ones, was the men themselves. Seamen,
no less than marines, were trained in musketry and their skill with the cutlass
– a fearsome close-quarters weapon – was legendary. The cutlass, the weapon
most closely associated with the British bluejacket was still considered a
useful weapon. The “stamp, thrust and hack” associated with its use must have
been terrifying at close quarters and regular exercising was a normal part of
every ship’s routine. Tomahawks – effective weapons in close action - were carried
by some ships into mid-century and beyond.

Cutlass drill on the quarterdeck of HMS Royal Sovereign (1991)

Cutlass drill ashore

In the later decades of the century proficiency in rifle
shooting was enhanced by practice at sea, made possible by use of the “Morris
Tube” calibre-adapter which allowed miniature rounds to be used in the standard
rifle of the time, the .303 Lee-Metford.

Rifle practice with Morris Tubes on the quarterdeck of HMS Royal Sovereign (1891)

.

In the 1890s a large Royal Navy vessel – such as an
“R-Class” battleship such as HMS Royal
Sovereign – was capable of landing a “Battalion” of four “Companies”, with
sixty men in each. Two 9-pounders and two Maxim machine guns, all on field
carriages, were available to land with them. When fully accoutred the men
carried rifles, ammunition pouches, water bottle, haversack, blanket and
entrenching spade. They were trained to carry out regimental attack and defence
manoeuvres – as the dramatic photograph below of “forming square” against
cavalry attack so well illustrates.

"Forming Square" to repel cavalry or human-wave attack

HMS Active's naval brigade in line with marines in centre, Zululand 1879

A typical example of a brigade landed from a smaller vessel was
that of HMS Active which came ashore
in Natal in November 1878 to prevent any from Zululand. The force consisted of
174 bluejackets, 42 marines and 14 West African “kroomen”. They were equipped
with two 12-pounder field guns, one Gatling and two 24-pounder Hales rocket launchers.
They were to play a valuable role in the Zulu War the following year.

Once ashore a naval brigade could be considered capable of
taking on just about any role, from fighting battles and besieging
fortifications to restoration and maintenance of law and order. In many cases
they were present before the army arrived and they often continued to play an
active role thereafter. Their versatility is perhaps best illustrated by the hurried
construction and manning of an armoured train at Alexandria, Egypt, in 1882, in
the aftermath of British landings there.

Armoured train at Alexandria 1882

Gatling in action against rioters in Alexandria, 1882

Though there were too many such Naval Brigade operations to
be listed here the most spectacular were those in The Crimea (1854-56), the
Indian Mutiny (1857-58), the Ashanti War (1873-74), Alexandria (1882 - see
illustrations above), the Gordon Relief Expedition (1885) and the Boxer Rising
(1900). There were literally dozens of smaller actions. Particularly notable
was the Benin Expedition of 1897 which was almost an entirely naval “show”
without Regular Army participation. Perhaps we’ll return to this later incident
in a later blog.

-----------------------------

The original – and much shorter – version of this article
was prompted by a question from a reader of Britannia’s
Wolf which is equally relevant to Britannia’s
Reach, Britannia’s Shark and Britannia’s
Spartan. The reader asked “Dawlish seems to be pretty comfortable fighting
on shore, but he was an officer in the Royal Navy. How come he seems to be able
to fight so well on land?” I have now expanded the article to include much more information.

The answer is that from his entry into the Navy in 1859
Dawlish, like other officers and ratings of the time, was trained to fight on
land as well as sea and had naval-brigade experience. His skill as a horseman,
learned in boyhood, proved an extra advantage. Click on the links below to
learn more about his adventures ashore and afloat.

Tuesday, 23 February 2016

When thinking about war at sea in the Age of Fighting Sail one’s
attention is immediately drawn to the ferocity of battle when ships engaged at
close quarters. In actuality however combat was relatively rare but wreckage in
stormy weather remained a constant – and exhausting – hazard at all times. One
is indeed struck by the number of ships – and lives – that were lost without
any intervention by the enemy. The Royal Navy was more vulnerable than those of
other maritime powers since British strategy rested on keeping at sea – and
dominating it – whether on close blockade of hostile coasts or bases, or cruising
to destroy enemy commerce, or projecting force anywhere in the world, from the Caribbean
to Java, from Egypt to Argentina.

The nightmare of shipwreck on a lee shore - painting by Francis Danby (1793-1861)

Keeping at sea did however mean inevitable
exposure to extreme weather, in many cases with fatal consequences. For all the
professional seamanship of ship’s officers and crews, sailing ships were, by their
very nature vulnerable, and never more so than when forced towards a lee-shore.
One example – a terrible one – of such a loss was that of HMS Sceptre in 1799.

A third-rate, in this case HMS Bellerophon - Sceptre would have looked generally similar

The Sceptre was a
62-gun third-rate ship of the line which had entered service in 1782, in time
to participate in the Battles of Trincomalee and of Culladore, off the Indian coast,
the last significant engagements of the Anglo-French was that had grown out of the
American War of Independence. She was laid up until 1794 and on recommissioning
participated in actions off Haiti and St. Helena. She spent a long time
thereafter at Cape Town – captured from the Dutch in 1795 – and was described
to have become “weak and leaky” there. Notwithstanding this she was to return
to Indian waters in early 1799, escorting a convoy and carrying an entire army
regiment – the 84th – herself. She leaked so badly in during one spell of bad
weather that she survived only by pumping. On reaching Bombay she was docked
and was strengthened by large timbers, known as riders, which were bolted
diagonally to her sides fore and aft. That this should have been necessary for
a relatively new ship indicated that the structure was in very poor condition. Now
repaired, she set out on her return voyage, reaching Cape Town in late October.

Table Bay in the early 19th Century - contemporary illustration

On November 5th, while moored in Table Bay, Cape
Town, a strong wind began to blow from the North West – a direction against which
the bay offered no shelter. No danger was anticipated however and flags were
flown, and a salute fired at noon, to celebrate “Guy Fawkes Day”, commemorating
the frustration of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. By early afternoon however the wind
was at gale force and the captain ordered top-masts to be struck (i.e. taken
down) and the fore and main yards lowered to reduce drag. Soon afterwards a mooring cable parted but another
anchor was dropped, with two guns attached to increase its holding power. By
early evening even this was proving insufficient to hold the ship and a boat
was launched to cross to HMS Jupiter,
a fourth-rate moored close by, to secure a cable to her. The waves were so
violent however that the boat capsized and its crew drowned. The Sceptre was now helpless in a raging
sea. No help could reach her from the land and officers who had gone ashore the
previous evening could only watch helplessly.

Loss of HMS 'Victory, 4 October 1744' by Peter Monamy (1681 - 1749)(Not Nelson's Victory, but an earlier ship. The Sceptre, in distress, might have looked like this)

At eight in the evening a new horror manifested itself, a
fire below decks, its origin unclear. Dense smoke was rolling from the hatches
in such volumes that it was impossible to go below to fight it. Two hours later
the helpless ship drove on to a reef, broadside towards the shore and heeling
to port towards the sea. The captain ordered the main and mizzen masts to be
cut away and this was done – discipline seems to have been well maintained even
at this desperate juncture. Lightened by the masts’ fall, the ship lightened and
rose free from the reef, moving closer to the shore and giving hope that she
might be thrown high enough upon the beach for all to be saved.

HMS Sceptre's destruction as imagined in a 19th Century illustration

Hope turned to despair as the Sceptre began to break up, the port side collapsing and throwing large
numbers of men into the water. The survivors clustered on the starboard side.
Several jumped overboard and tried to swim ashore but were borne away on the
seething eddies. The entire poop structure wrenched itself free and carried
towards the shore, observers there estimating that seventy men or more were
clinging to it. It never reached the beach, capsizing as a wave hit it and
taking every man on it with it. Worse
was to come. The shattered hull was now heeled towards the shore, men clustered
on it, but as a large wave hit it was lifted again, then smashed down, breaking
into two sections just before the mainmast. The after section appears to have disintegrated
immediately but the forward part lasted
a little longer, with some forty men clinging to it as waves surged over them.
Then it too collapsed into separate chunks of wreckage.

Guns and wreckage from HMS Sceptre thrown up on the beachas drawn by a witness, Lady Anne Barnard

The tragedy was played out close the shore, so that the crowds
that gathered there – townspeople, soldiers from the garrison – saw the horror unfold
but found themselves powerless to help. Fires were lit to guide swimmers but
many of them were killed by the churning wreckage as well as by drowning. Only
a handful reached the shore alive and the next morning three waggon-loads of
dead bodies were gathered for burial. The death toll, which included the captain,
was horrific – 349 seamen and marines were killed or drowned. Of the 51 who
reached the shore nine were so badly injured as to die there.

One of the survivors of the disaster was “The Indestructible
Admiral Nesbit Willoughby”, whose story has been told in an earlier blog (clickhere for details). Then a lieutenant, he was lucky enough to be one of the Sceptre’s officers who were ashore and who
were forced to watch from the beach. Thirteen years later this extraordinary
man was to survive the horrors of the retreat from Moscow as a prisoner of the French.
One cannot wonder whether he was lucky, by surviving these and other adventures,
or unlucky in being an apparent magnet for danger!

Friday, 19 February 2016

In the late 19th and early 20th
Century the French and German navies became fixated on the idea of “Cruiser
Warfare” – the individual ships operating far from home on the world’s oceans and
striking at enemy seaborne trade. Britain, with enormous merchant fleet and the
dependence of its economy on overseas trade, was seen as particularly
vulnerable. Belief in the concept rested on the success of such operations in
the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars by both privateers and national navies.
As late as the American Civil War, in the 1860s, the Confederate riders Alabama and Florida were to hurt disrupt Union trade far from home waters and
necessitate diversion of significant resources to hunt them down. In the 1890s
so called “protected cruisers”, which would later evolve into the light-cruiser
classification, were seen as especially suited to such tasks.

The French navy
went so far as to build one such cruiser, the Châteaurenault, which was designed to look from a distance like an
ocean liner, and so increase its chances of closing with an unsuspecting
victim. Several classes of German cruisers of the immediate pre-WW1 period were
especially suited to such operations. It was also intended that in time of war
civilian vessels would also be commandeered and armed. Unarmoured they might be,
but they were intended to capture defenceless merchant shipping and not battle
it out with a naval opponent. The Royal Navy, no less than those of other
nations, had made provisions for such conversions and subsidies were often provided
to shipping companies to build strengthened positions into decks on to which
guns could be mounted in wartime. (The RMS Lusitania
was one such vessel, though she was not armed at the time of her loss).

Priinz Eitel Friedrich in peacetime - and a candidate for transformation to ocean raider in times of war

The weakness of the cruiser warfare concept was that the
conditions that had favoured success in the Napoleonic era no longer applied. Sailing ships could operate far from base for
many months – food and fresh water being the only consumables – but steam
vessels were heavily dependent on shore support, not only for fuel supply but
for maintenance of boiler and machinery. Britain was well supplied with
widely-spread fortified naval bases when war broke out in 1914 but Germany had
only a single such base, Tsingtao, on the Chinese coast. German colonial
harbours elsewhere were unfortified and were thus easily occupied in the early
months of the war. Tsingtao, despite heavy investments in strong fortifications,
was to fall to a combined Japanese –British force before the end of 1914. The
upshot was that German vessels on overseas deployments could not rely on
fuelling and maintenance facilities other than those in Germany itself. Some
reliance had been placed on chartered colliers supplying coal from neutral
ports and rendezvousing with warships at sea but in the event this source
proved of little utility. (Click here to read blog on “Germany’s Naval Nomads”) In practice German raiders were
dependent on coal captured from prizes. In practice, transfer of coal from one
ship to another on the open sea was a brutally difficult task in all but the
calmest weather.

Gunboat SMS Iltis - sister of the Luchs, which gave up her guns to arm the Eitel Friedrich

It is against this background that the relative success of
the German raider SMS Prinz Eitel
Friedrich should be seen. A 16,000-ton, 503-foot liner, launched in 1904
was in service for the Norddeutscher Lloyd Company between Germany and China.
Designed for long ocean passages, she was capable of a maximum 15 knots. Her
peacetime crew was of the order of 400, reflecting the heavy labour demands of
a large coal-fired steamship. She was at Shanghai when war broke out in August
1914 and she proceeded immediately to Tsingtao to be fitted out as a raider and
to support Admiral von Spee’s East Asia Squadron (Click here for an earlier blog on this squadron’s victory in the Battle of Coronel). The Eitel Friedrich
was fitted with four 4-inch (10.5 cm) guns and several smaller weapons from the
obsolescent gunboats Luchs and Tiger. She now commissioned as a warship
of the Imperial German Navy as SMS Prinz Eitel
Friedrich, under the command of Korvettenkapitän Max Therichens, previously
of the Luchs. She slipped out of
Tsingtao before the Japanese-British blockade of the base became effective and
she sailed to join von Spee’s squadron at Pagan, in the Northern Marianas
island group, a German colony since 1899, arriving there on 12th
August 1914, some two weeks after outbreak of war. Too slow to join von Spee’s
cruiser squadron, the Eitel Friedrich was
detached for independent action against the merchant shipping of Britain and
her allies, initially off Australia.

Stern view of Prinz Eitel Friedrich - gun just visible on the poop

The Eitel Friedrich
was to operate in the Pacific for the next three months, hunted, as von Spee’s
squadron was separately by Japanese as well as British forces. Britain’s formal
alliance with Japan – which was to last until 1923 – was paying off and
fulfilling its intended role of releasing British ships from the Pacific area
for employment closer to home. No success was scored by the Eitel Friedrich until early December but
her second capture was invaluable, a French sailing collier carrying 3500 tons
of coal. As this vessel carried no radio it was possible to tow her to the tiny
Chilean possession of Easter Island which was not connected to the mainland by
either telegraph or radio. The Eitel
Friedrich’s presence thus unknown and here the coal could be transferred in
sheltered waters and sheep were also taken on board for meat. The collier – the
first of eight sailing vessels the Eitel
Friedrich would capture – was scuttled after the transfer. The collier’s
crew were put ashore though those of subsequent captures were taken on board,
accommodation being ample.

By this time the Eitel
Friedrich was with one exception – the light cruiser SMS Dresden – the only survivor of van Spee’s
squadron, the others having been hunted down and sunk. Her engines and boilers were
already showing signs of wear and top speed had fallen, and was likely to fall
still further. With no friendly base available there was no option but to head
for Germany, inflicting maximum damage on enemy shipping on the way.
Accordingly, in January 1915, with enough coal and mutton to last until early
April, Captain Therichens brought his ship over into the South Atlantic.
Conscious of the risk of British ships patrolling the Cape Horn area, he steered
a course far to the south, along the northern fringes of Antarctica.

The William P Frye

Over the next month the Eitel
Friedrich was to sink a further eight ships off the South American coast.
Aware that he was incapable of outrunning any enemy, Therichens stayed away
from the main trade routes and detection of his presence was made all the more
difficult by most smaller merchant ships of the period not carrying radio. His tonnage score was steadily increasing –
reaching before operations ended a total of eleven ships of 33,000 Gross
Registered Tons. One of these victims
was to prove especially significant, the large (3,374-ton) American sailing
vessel William P Frye, detained on 27th
January. It should be noted that the United States was still neutral at this
stage of the war. The Frye was
carrying wheat to Britain and, despite her American registration, Therichens
ordered the entire cargo to be thrown overboard before she would be allowed to
proceed. This process went slowly – and dangerously, for too-long a stay in any
one area increased the risk of interception –
so on the following day Therichens ordered the American crew to be taken
on board the Eitel Friedrich and the
ship herself to be destroyed by gunfire. This was the first case of a neutral
American ship being sunk by the German Navy – actions that were ultimately draw
the United States into war with Germany.

The Prinz Eitel Friedrich arriving at Newport News on 12th March 1915

Four further ships – two steamers and two sailing vessels –
were captured and destroyed in February but during the following month it was
obvious that with supplies running low, engines suffering breakdowns, hull
badly fouled and awareness that British patrolling has intensified, the chance
of reaching Germany was all but zero. There was nothing for it but to head for
a neutral port – in this case Newport News in Virginia, arriving there on 12th
January. Therichens seemed to have entertained hopes of being allowed to carry
out major repairs, and the American authorities – bizarrely, one must think –
allowed the captured crews, now amounting to some 300 men, to be kept on board.
Therichens argued, with some success, to be allowed to stay in Newport News for
several weeks to effect repairs, but the sinking of the William P Frye had eroded sympathy and the case was in the process
of growing into a major diplomatic issue. It was obvious at last however that
escape would be impossible, since a British armoured cruiser, HMS Cumberland and a Canadian cruiser HMSCS Niobe, were waiting just outside
territorial waters. (The similarity with the plight of the Graf Spee at Montevideo in 1939, when a later HMS Cumberland was also waiting outside, is
very marked). Accepting defeat, Therichens surrendered his ship and his crew
for internment in America.

The Eitel Friedrich
was to remain idle for the next two years but when the United States entered
the war she was taken over for use as a troopship and renamed USS DeKalb. She was to see intense service carrying troops
across the Atlantic to Europe and equally intense service carrying them back in
1919. Thereafter she was to be sold to the United American Lines Company and
operated on transatlantic service under the name SS Mount Clay. She was laid up
in 1926 and scrapped nine years later.

It was a mundane end for a raider that had evaded capture
with skill and determination for seven
months and had inflicted significant loss on enemy shipping at little cost.

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

A blog last month dealt with an 1876 case of a ship “passing
by on the other side” and not rendering assistance to a wrecked vessel (click here to read this article). An even more extreme case occurred the same year,
one involving “Hit and Run”, with a ship causing a collision that sank another
vessel ignoring the plight of her survivors without any significant effort to
render assistance.

SS Strathclyde, seen in 1873

On the afternoon of February 17th 1876 a large British
trading steamer, the Strathclyde – 1950
tons, 290-feet – was in the English Channel, just off Dover, on the first leg
of a voyage to Bombay. She carried a crew of 47 as well as 23 passengers. The weather
was fine, “with a fair wind”, visibility good and the sea relatively smooth. Strathclyde was making some nine knots. A
generally similar ship was spotted about two miles astern and still further out
to sea and it was estimated that courses, if maintained, would cross. The
stranger turned out to be the German Franconia,
en route for the West Indies, and steaming at higher speed than the Strathclyde. As the faster vessel. the Franconia was expected to take evasive
action and on this assumption the Strathclyde
held a steady course. A half-hour passed, during which time the Franconia had all but overhauled the Strathclyde and was giving no indication
of altering her course – indeed, according to one contemporary account “the Franconia came down upon the Strathclyde as if she had been an enemy’s
vessel in time of war.” What seems to have been a panicked order was given at the
last moment to avoid collision and the Franconia
was swung around, possibly in the hope of crossing the Strathclyde’s wake. The manoeuvre failed and the Franconia smashed into the Strathclyde amidships, tearing a huge
rent into which water rushed. She rebounded from the impact, then surged
forward again, striking the Strathclyde
and gouging a second hole in her side further aft. The Strathclyde began to settle by the stern and was clearly doomed.

A contemporary illustration shows the Franconia reversing from the StrathclydeThe clouds of steam enveloping the latter may have been artistic licence!

The Franconia’s
bows had been damaged, but not fatally so, but the over-riding desire of her
captain, one Ferdinand Keyn, was to get his ship safely into the nearby harbour
of Dover. He was encouraged in this by James Porter, a British pilot taken on board
for the transit of the Dover Straits. The Strathclyde’s
first mate and four seamen seem to have managed to jump across to the Franconia before the ships separated,
reporting later that discipline seemed to have broken down there. They urged
Captain Keyn to drop boats for the Strathclyde’s
survivors but he was deaf to their appeals. After no more than a few minutes,
with feeble attempts at rescue, the Franconia
backed off and headed for Dover.

Two of Strathclyde’s
lifeboats got away, the first with fifteen of the women passengers but it was
quickly swamped, most of the occupants drowning. The second boat got off safely
and recovered two living survivors from the water. The ship disappeared in less
than ten minutes and took many with her. A fishing lugger from Deal, the Early Morn, arrived on the scene and pulled
survivors from the water. The Dover lifeboat had been launched – the whole
tragedy had played out so close inshore as to be plainly visible – and was
towed towards the stricken vessel by a harbour tug. The final death toll was 38,
out of a total 70 crew and passengers. Strathclyde’s
captain, J.D. Eaton, stayed with her until the final plunge but he did survive.

The Strathclyde's last moments. Note Franconia on right and heading for Dover

The Franconia
reached Dover safely but her Captain Keyn was charged with manslaughter for his
unwillingness to render sufficient assistance. Considerable opprobrium was also
heaped on the British pilot on board, of whom it was written at the time “Let us hand James Porter’s name down in
infamy; let us blush to think that he could call himself an Englishman!”

Keyn’s trail, at London’s Central Criminal Court, was to
have implications beyond the immediate case. He was convicted as charged, but the
verdict was quashed on appeal. The
grounds for this rested on the argument that English Law was not applicable to foreign
vessels in English waters. Sufficient feeling was however aroused by the case
that soon thereafter Britain adopted International Territorial Waters provisions
which were already in use by several other countries. These defined such waters
as extending three miles from the shoreline, this distance reflecting the contemporary
range of coastal artillery. As for the
owners of the Strathclyde, they brought
and action against the Franconia’s
owners in the Admiralty Court and were awarded £45,000. It seems a very paltry
sum in view of the loss of life.

Britannia’s Spartan

Six-inch breech loading guns represented the cutting edge of naval technology in the early 1880s. In my novel Britannia’s Spartan they are seen in use on both British and Japanese ships. The splendid Japanese woodcut below shows Japanese crews managing just such a weapon in the war of 1895 against China. Click here for further details.

Friday, 12 February 2016

In a recent blog (click here) we met Captain Henry Inman (1762
–1809), a noted frigate commander who was in overall command of operations off
Dunkirk in 1800 in which the French frigate Désirée
was captured in dramatic circumstances. This ship was commissioned into the
Royal Navy and Inman was to command her at the Battle of Copenhagen in the following
year. A man of great ability, Inman’s career was to be dogged by ill health and
he died before achieving his full potential. His most impressive achievement was
however in his youth – he was only twenty years old at the time – and it was
characterised by leadership and seamanlike skills of the highest order. Without him well over 200 lives might well have been lost.

The Battle of the Saintes, April 1782

Promoted to lieutenant in 1780, after surviving two separate
shipwrecks, Inman, on shore duty in the West Indies, missed participation in the
large fleet action, The Battle of the Saintes, off Dominica in April 1782. This
had culminated in a crushing British victory over the French. In the course of
this engagement the French “74” line-of-battle ship Hector was captured. Though badly damaged in the action she was
commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Hector.
Under the command of Captain John Bourchier (approx. 1755 – 1819) she was
ordered to return to Britain. Henry Inman joined her as First Lieutenant. Getting
the battered Hector seaworthy for the
Atlantic crossing involved removal of 22 of her guns and replacement of her
masts with shorter ones, presumably so as not to over-strain her hull. Her crew
was significantly short-handed, some 300 men, many of whom were invalids. In
normal circumstances a ship of this size would carry a crew of 500 to 700 men
and it is therefore obvious that her fighting ability was very seriously
impaired. She sailed in late August, none on board suspecting that she would
have to survive a violent hurricane that was to spell doom for other survivors
of the Saintes Battle and killing over 3500 men.

Before the unanticipated hurricane another enemy had to be
confronted. On the evening of September 5th the Hector was found by two 40-gun French frigates, L’Aigle and Gloire. These fresh, undamaged vessels quickly perceived Hector’s decrepitudeand one placed herself on her beam, and the other on her quarter and
began to pour fire into her. Poorly manoeuvrable, Hector was badly placed to avoid several rakings but she returned
fire sufficiently to damage both attackers. It was a very creditable
performance for a ship so weakly manned and armed. Even so, had the French
vessels continued the bombardment from a distance they might have sunk Hector. Instead they made the mistake of
attempting to board and their efforts were bloodily repulsed. The action was
broken off after six hours and both French ships bore off. (They were to be captured
by a British force off the Delaware coast a week later – the damage sustained
in the conflict with the Hector quite
possibly a contributory factor).

Hector’s survival
had been dearly bought. 46 of her crew had been killed or wounded, an
especially serious concern when so many of her complement were already invalids.
Captain Bourchier had been so badly wounded as to be incapacitated and effective
command now passed to the twenty-year old Henry Inman. The ship herself had been
weakened yet further – the hull had sustained more injury, as had the masts,
rigging and sails.

The "74" HMS Theseus surviving a hurricane in 1804The Hector's plight would have been even worse as she had lost both masts and rudder

"All Hands to the Pumps" 1889by Henry Scott Tuke

It was in this state that the Hector was to encounter the massive hurricane that swept through the
Central Atlantic on September 17th. Battered by high seas, she lost her
rudder and all the masts. Leaks were sprung and incoming water reached a level at
which a major portion of the provisions and fresh water was spoiled. Survival
now became a matter of continuous pumping, a labour that demanded physical
exertion on an open wind and spray-lashed deck which would have been severe for
a fit and healthy crew, but almost impossible for one so debilitated.

The
pumping ordeal was to last two weeks, with Inman – himself driven to the
limits of exhaustion – needing at times to resort to the threat of his pistols
to keep men at the task. Many appear to have died from fatigue while those who
had finished their turns had no energy to do other than lie, washed over by
surging water, in the scuppers. Despite these efforts the water level was still
rising inside the stricken hulk. Men already sick were dying daily and in the last
four days of these two weeks the ship was without drinking water even as the hull
structure began to disintegrate.

It was at this extremity, when hope was all but abandoned,
that a sail was spotted. This was the tiny
snow Hawke, of Dartmouth, Devon, under
the command of a Captain John Hill. Though the seas were still high Hill
brought her alongside Hector, remained with her through the night, and in the morning
commenced transfer of the survivors, now only some 200 in total, including the wounded
Captain Bourchier. Henry Inman remained on Hector
until the last man had left. She sank ten minutes after he reached the Hawke.

A naval snow, 1759, by Charles BrookingThe figures on deck give an idea of just how small a craft such a vessel was

The situation was now only slightly less desperate. The Hawke was small – it is unlikely that
she would have been longer than 100 feet – and to make room for Hector’s survivors necessitated dumping
much of her cargo overboard. Even at that she was so grossly overcrowded, and the
extra weight taken on gave concern for stability, that Hill and Inman had to enforce
orders regarding how many men could be on deck at any one time. Food was quickly
depleted, despite rationing, and the water allowance was only a half pint per
man per day. Despite this caution only a single cask of fresh water remained
when land was sighted close to St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Inman and Hill were – deservedly – the heroes of the hour
and were carried in triumph through the streets of St. John’s. Without the skill
and bloody-minded determination of both men, the death toll would have
undoubtedly been higher. With his health badly impaired by his ordeal Inman was
put on half-pay on his return to Britain and it was to until 1790 that he was
again assigned a command. Further adventures lay ahead – and we’ll return to them
in a future blog.

Tuesday, 9 February 2016

Today’s blog is from a guest, Helen Hollick, whose novels range from
Arthurian Britain, via Saxon England, to sea adventures which she says are “not meant to be taken seriously”. Invariably
witty and entertaining, exuding energy and joie-de-vivre, Helen’s website and blog
are a source of delight (see links at end of article). Her “Sea Witch Voyages” series, set in the so-called Golden Age of
Piracy, are unique in the nautical fiction genre. I’m very grateful therefore that
she should contribute some entertaining musings on society’s continuing
fascination with pirates. Over to Helen…

SO WHY PIRATES? Helen Hollick

So why write about pirates? Why read about pirates? Even more
bizarre, why dress up as pirates?
What exactly is the exotic lure of pirates in the realm of entertainment?

Let’s be honest here, real pirates were not (are not!) nice people. The most active period of piracy is called
the ‘Golden Age’, a few short years in the early 1700s. What is

‘Golden’ about outright ruffians who steal things, frighten and
torture their victims? Who murder, destroy, blow things (and people) up?
Pirates were the terrorist hooligans of the eighteenth century – yet we love
novels and movies about them. We have pirate festivals and pirate fun days;
pirate costumes are among the highest choice for fancy-dress parties, there is
even an annual ‘Talk Like A Pirate Day’
every September 19th.

Why?

Very possibly three answers. Romanticism. Escapism. The thrill of
safe danger. Johnny Depp’s creation of Jack Sparrow (at least for the first
movie, the others were not so good) re-kindled that spark of interest in
nautical adventure where belief is suspended in favour of a darn good sailor’s
yarn. Safe escapism to that other world where bad things look like they happen,
but actually they don’t. It’s all enjoyable make-believe.

In reality there is nothing romantic about a ship being boarded by
dozens of drunken cut-throat louts bellowing at the top of their voices, ‘Death! Death! Death!’, all eager to
torture, rape, murder, plunder and loot, and then destroy the evidence by
setting the ship on fire.

But fictional pirates
are very different. They are rogues, yes; they would as soon cut your throat as
cut your money-pouch from your belt, but there is a rugged charm associated
with these scallywags. Pirate tales are a grand adventure romp, usually with
barely any historical accuracy whatsoever. You know that the hero will survive
the storm and subsequent shipwreck, recover from a near-fatal wound, dodge the
gallows, find the treasure and get the girl in the end. We all enjoy the
adventures of a loveable rogue because – well, he isn’treal. The danger
he gets into or creates makes our hearts race – the thrill of the chase or the
fight, the within-an-inch-of-his-life death-defying scenes. The ability to keep
on fighting/running/bedroom antics even though shot/wounded/kicked in an ‘ouch’
vulnerable place where real men would be curled up on the floor clutching their
nether regions, howling in agony. You know these heroes are in trouble. You also
know they are going to get out of it – the thrill, the excitement, is not
knowing how they do so.

The secret of a good pirate novel (or any novel come to that!) is
the pace, action, larger than life characters and how believable it all is. Even
fantasy has to be believable – which is one of the reasons Game Of Thrones is so successful. I was halfway through Series One
of GoT before I figured it was fantasy-based, not historical-adventure. (The
dragons gave it away, I guess.)

It is not just our thrill-seeking generation to be enamoured by
these bad-boy characters. Back in the eighteenth century the Big Entertainment (the
equivalent of going to a Celeb-packed Premier Opening Night) was the spectacle
of the Gallows. A good hanging drew the crowds, the more famous the criminal,
the bigger the audience. To some, the prospect of seeing a man hanged was the
highlight of the year. A hanging was a party atmosphere with pie-sellers and souvenirs.
Dancing, revelry, and then, Top of the Bill you get to see a man taking twenty
minutes or so to be strangled to death along with all the other unpleasantries
that happen to the slowly expiring body. That long drop with a short stop was
not in use in the early 1700s; to hang meant standing on a barrel, or cart,
which was rapidly removed leaving the poor soul to kick and squirm as the noose
around his (or her) neck choked him to
death. No quick broken-neck death. Captain Kidd, poor chap, was pushed off once
at the Gallows at Wapping, London – and the rope broke. They picked him up,
tied a new noose, stood him on the barrel, kicked it away… and the rope broke
again. Had it happened a third time he would have been set free. Alas for him,
someone obviously had the bright idea to get a different rope…

Another chap did survive, but I’m not sure it was a good thing. If
the corpse was not paid for and collected by relatives (who often grabbed hold
of the strangling body in the hope that the extra weight would kill quicker –
literally, ‘hangers on’) then it was sent to the local medical school for
dissection. This poor bloke was hanged, sent for dissection but was not
actually dead. He regained consciousness as he lay there, naked, on the table
about to be cut open!

But that’s where the ‘safe danger’ comes into play isn’t it? A
hanging, or a horror movie, a murder-mystery or a thrills and spills adventure
where the ‘baddies’ get killed with no remorse from the one doing the killing –
usually the hero who ends up with the cute busty blonde - sets
our heart racing, our eyes popping, and in no danger whatsoever apart from a
nightmare or two.

My pirate novels, the Sea
Witch Voyages are adult adventures not meant to be taken seriously. I write
them for fun, they are meant to be read as tongue-in-cheek Errol Flynn / Jack
Sparrow romps. They are entertainment… even if the real pirates were far from
entertaining to the poor souls who met a boat-load of them somewhere on the
open ocean!

And Thanks to Helen for a most entertaining guest blog! I look forward to welcomng her back again in the future - Antoine Vanner

Friday, 5 February 2016

There is something intensely sad when reading about forgotten
conflicts, often fought over issues that were trivial even at the time, and which
were memorable only to the families whose happiness was wrecked by loss of
loved ones. War may be “Last Argument of Kings” – as was inscribed
on his cannons by Louis XIV – but the true price is paid by much humbler people.
One such forgotten conflict was that between the Balkan nations of Serbia and
Bulgaria in 1885. Military operations lasted only two weeks but they resulted
in a decisive victory for one of the parties.

The Price of Glory - A Bulgarian hospital at the war's end

Bulgaria as a nation had only been born seven years
previously, following its liberation from Ottoman-Turkish (mis)rule in the brutal
Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. This had been triggered by Turkish massacres of
Christian Bulgarians in 1876 in what was still then a Turkish province. Russia,
traditionally the protector of Eastern Christians, used this as a pretext for a
declaration of war on Turkey, with the ultimate objective of capturing Istanbul
(Constantinople) and thereby securing an
outlet on the Mediterranean. The war was to be bloody in the extreme – other than
the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 the largest in Europe between Waterloo and World
War 1. It was characterised by excess on both sides and further massacres. The
Russian Armies smashed their way to the very outskirts of Istanbul and had Britain
not threatened to intervene on Turkey’s behalf would have done so. (This war provides the background to my novel
Britannia’s Wolf, in which the action plays out in the last, brutal months of
fighting - see link at end of article).

The final outcome was decided at the
Congress of Berlin in 1878 when the major European powers agreed revised borders.
This involved creation of Bulgaria as an independent principality, but with a
large enclave within it, known as Eastern Rumelia, which remained under nominal
Ottoman control. The challenge was now to find a ruler for the new principality
and the solution usually adopted in such cases in the nineteenth century was resorted
to. This was to find some under-employed member of a minor royal or semi-royal
house, usually German.

Prince Alexander

In this case the lucky man was to be Prince Alexander of
Battenberg (1857 – 1893), then serving as a lieutenant in the Prussian Life-Guards
in Berlin. Why this was considered a suitable qualification for a head-of-state
role, even for a constitutional monarchy, as Bulgaria was to be, is somewhat of
a mystery. In the event however Alexander was not to do badly. His older brother, Prince Louis (1854-1921,
was already serving in Britain’s Royal Navy and in due course would rise the office
of First Sea Lord. Despite a distinguished career and unquestioned loyalty to
Britain, this unfortunate man was hounded from office in 1914 because of this
German name, which he thereafter changed from Battenberg to Montbatten. Lord
Louis Montbatten (1900-1979), uncle of the present Duke of Edinburgh, and last
Viceroy of India, was his son.

Alexander, now a constitutional monarch was Prince of Bulgaria,
was to find himself caught between the machinations of the Russians, who wanted
him as a puppet, on the one hand
and of Bulgarian politicians on the other. Frustrated, he lost patience on 1881
and, with the connivance of Russia, suspended the constitution and assumed absolute power. For the next two years the
real power was in the hands of two Russian generals, Sobolev and Kaulbars, sent
by the Czar, much to the anger of many Bulgarians. In 1883 Alexander restored the
constitution – with broad support from the Bulgarian political classes –an
action that enraged the Czar and led to the withdrawal of senior Russians who
had been training the Bulgarian army.

Throughout this period Eastern Rumelia had remained under
nominal Turkish control but a revolution there in 1885 gave Alexander the opportunity
to annex it and create a single Bulgarian state. This step was popular
throughout Bulgaria but the possibility existed that Turkey would strike back.
Bulgarian forces were accordingly sent south-east to defend the border against
any Turkish offensive.

Milan I

Serbia, Bulgaria’s western neighbour, saw this situation as
an opportunity for an easy seizure of a small area of disputed territory on the
border between the two countries (see map). In November 1885 Serbian forces,
60,000 strong, crossed the frontier under the command of King Milan I
(1854-1901). Eager for personal glory, and confident of an easy victory, he did
not appoint experienced generals to key positions. Though well-armed with
modern Mauser rifles the Serbian troops were poorly trained in their use. Recently-ordered
modern artillery had not yet arrived. Morale seems to have been poor, not least
because the troops seem to have been told initially that they going to the aid
of the Bulgarians in a war against Turkey. That they were now to fight the Bulgarians
instead caused considerable confusion and lack of trust.

Given that Bulgarian forces were massed to the south-east,
to face a Turkish threat, the Serbian advance in the north-west should have
proved a walkover. In the event however
Alexander and the Bulgarian high-command took the risk of assuming that the
Turks would not attack – an assumption that proved correct – and worked
somewhat of a miracle in shifting the bulk of their forces to meet the Serbians.
Doing so was dependent on a
limited-capacity railroad as well as very impressive feats of marching. One infantry
regiment marched some 60 miles in 32 hours, and indication of the high level of
Bulgarian morale. The Bulgarian weakness was in senior officers since the
Russians occupying these positions had been withdrawn and the burden of command
fell on middle-ranking Bulgarians (causing the conflict to be known afterwards
in Bulgaria as "The War of the
Captains"). Armed with
poorer rifles than the Serbians, the Bulgarians did however have the advantage
of modern breech-loading artillery.

Alexander on his way to the Front

The weak screen of Bulgarian forces in the mountainous
terrain on the border succeeded in delaying the Serbian advance while reinforcements arrived
from the south-east. These occupied previously prepared defensive position at
Slivnitsa, where the decisive battle was to take place. Some two and a half
miles of trenches and artillery redoubts ran along a ridge in front of
Slivnitsa village and the flanks were protected by steep mountainous terrain on
the right and hilly country to the left. Experience in the later stages of the American
Civil War and in the Russo-Turkish Was had shown that frontal assaults on entrenched
positions were unlikely to succeed, and in the years since both these conflicts
significant improvement had been made as regards range, effect and accuracy of
both small-arms and artillery.

Alexander in command at the Battle of Slivnitsa

By November 16th Prince Alexander – personally commanding
the Bulgarian forces – had some 25,000 troops in place, with 15,000 more
arriving over the next two days. The Serbian attack commenced on November 17th
and continued through the 18th and 19th. An attack on the
Bulgarian centre was – not surprisingly – thrown back, artillery fire proving
especially effective, while an attempted Serbian flanking attack on the Bulgarian
left on the 19th proved equally abortive. The Serbians were now
forced to retreat, followed over the frontier by the victorious Bulgarians. An attempt by the Serbians to dig in to resist
the Bulgarian onslaught failed under a determined flank attack. By November 27th
the Serbs were back at Nish and at this point the Austro-Hungarian Empire
demanded that the Bulgarians accept a cease-fire or face reinforcement of the Serbs
by Austro-Hungarian troops. This was accepted, although peace negotiations were
to last until March of the following year.

Serbian troops surrendering

The 1886 Treaty of Bucharest that ended the war was to
result in no adjustments to the Serbo-Bulgarian border. The butcher’s bill for
achieving this return to the status quo
ante involved each side suffering 700-800
dead and some 4500 wounded. Bulgaria was
justifiably proud of its military victory but a residue of bitterness was to
remain between both countries which was to have dreadful consequences three
decades later in World War 1. Outside
both countries the only popular memory of the conflict – and a fading one today
at that – was George Bernard Shaw’s cynical comedy “Arms and the Man.” Set in the war’s immediate aftermath, this was,
quite bizarrely, made into an operetta entitled
“The Chocolate Soldier” (Der Praliné-Soldat) by Oskar Strauss in
1908.

Alexander's forced abdication - one wonders if the revolvers were artistic licence

In the circumstances Prince Alexander had acquitted himself
admirably. He was not however to enjoy
his enhanced reputation for long. Many Bulgarian officers considered themselves
inadequately rewarded for their part in the victory and in August 1896, a mere
nine months after his victory, he was forced to abdicate, possibly at
gun-point. An attempt at a come-back failed and he finally left Bulgaria the following
month. He was to live only seven years more, mainly in Austria, where he held a
military command. The reduction in status and dignity must have been hard to
endure and one cannot but feel that he deserved better. He died in 1893.

And the Bulgarian monarchy? Yet another member of a minor
German princely house was found to fill the vacancy. But that’s a separate
story!

Britannia’s Wolf

The first book in the Dawlish Chronicles Series

1877: Russian forces drive deep into the corrupt
Ottoman-Turkish Empire. In the depths of
a savage winter, as the Turks face defeat on all fronts, a British officer is
enmeshed and finds himself confronting enemy ironclads, Cossack lances and
merciless Kurdish irregulars. And in the midst of this chaos, while he himself
is a pawn in the rivalry of the Sultan’s half-brothers for control of the
collapsing empire, he is unwillingly and unexpectedly drawn to a woman whom he
believes he should not love.

Britannia's Wolf It is also available as an audio book read by the
distinguished American actor David Doersch. If you haven't previously ordered
an audio-book from audible.com you can download it without cost as part of a
30-Day Free Trial. You can listen on your Smart Phone, Tablet or MP3 Player.

About Me

My "Dawlish Chronicles" are set in the late 19th Century and reflect my deep interest in the politics, attitudes and technology of the period. The fifth novel in the series, “Britannia’s Amazon” is now available in both paperback and Kindle formats. It follows the four earlier Dawlish Chronicles, "Britannia's Wolf", "Britannia's Reach”, "Britannia's Shark" and "Britannia's Spartan". Click on the book covers below to learn more or to purchase.
I’ve had an adventurous career in the international energy industry and am proud of having worked in every continent except Antarctica. History is a driving passion in my life and I have travelled widely to visit sites of historical significance, many insights gained in this way being reflected in my writing. I welcome contact on Facebook and via this Blog. My website is www.dawlishchronicles.com and its “Conflict” section has a large number of articles on topics from the mid-18th Century to the early 20th Century.